177: Pivot Method as 4-Stage Coaching Framework [Workshop Replay]

What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot, The Only Move That Matters is your next one. For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com slash podcast.

If change is the only concept, then let's get better at it. Here we go. As many of you who subscribe to my weekly Pivot List newsletter know, at the beginning of the year, I scheduled a bunch of free sessions on Pivot. Yesterday, I shared the Pivot Map What's Next for Individuals session, and in today's episode, I'm including the workshop recording from Pivot for Managers, Mentors, and Coaches.

This one covers how to hold career conversations using the Pivot Method as a conversation framework. Again, I didn't go line by line and edit the audio, so you might hear references to the slides or the screen. If you want to watch this recording with video included, you can go to pivotmethod.com slash watch. As always, stay safe and sane, everybody.

Thank you so much for being here. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Pivot as a coaching framework. This session will be on using the Pivot Method as a way to guide one-on-one career conversations with your team.

This is also very relevant for mentors, coaches, and certainly for those of you who are managers and working within organizations. My name is Jenny Blake. I wrote a book called Pivot, The Only Move That Matters is your next one. And I had no idea when I set up these sessions a month ago that we would be pivoting around a pandemic.

So it's very interesting. I decided to keep these on the books. But, of course, to the nature of what I talk about, to sort of shift the approach a little bit. I will be taking you through the typical content here on how I teach Pivot as a coaching framework.

But I'll also be speaking to the heightened sense of anxiety and uncertainty during this time. Because now more than ever, we're seeing leaders communicating with their teams. We're seeing companies communicate with their customers. There's a lot of communication happening.

And there's a tremendous amount of fear, anxiety, insecurity, and very real questions about where the global economy is heading. Here in the States, I'm in New York City. We're on total shelter-at-home lockdown. And we're all feeling the effects of this.

So now, while now may not be the time that people are the most open and available to, let's say, long-term dreaming and scheming, what we can also say is that this is a time that is changing all of us. This is a time that is calling all of us to rise, show up differently, to lead, and more than anything, to listen. There's one thing I can impart about Pivot as a coaching framework. It is to stop solving and start listening.

That's really what this is about today. That so often, even individuals who are looking to plan their next moves, and often earlier career employees assume that that means they've got to angle for a promotion or try to change their role in order to grow, that actually there's nothing to solve. The big secret to Pivoting is that it's much more a mindset of being agile, adaptable, small experiments, and really figuring out what can you try and how can you allow yourself to explore before you solve. There's no there there.

And that is certainly true now in the midst of this global crisis more than ever. None of us has the answers. So how do we listen, guide, and coach our teams and even our loved ones during a time like this? I would love to know from you in the chat.

So if you're just getting here, let me know what would you love to walk away with by the end of this session. And that will help me make sure that I address whatever it is that you came here for. I know many of us are starting to get screen fatigue from all the virtual online meetings and Zoom calls, and there's so much. There's this beautiful and almost overabundance of webinars, training sessions, meetings.

And so it's going to be important to get up and stretch. I will be recording this, and we will send out the recording if you can't stay for the full time. But let me know what brought you here. Of everything you have on your plate with all that's going on right now, what would you love to walk away with by the end of this session?

And by the way, this is the first coaching question. I always, always ask this at the start of a coaching session. So I've just given you a little of my background. I worked at a startup for two years, Google for five and a half, in coaching, training, and career development, and now I've been self-employed for nine years.

I went through coach training through the Coaches Training Institute, CTI, in 2008, and I took that and applied it to Google. I wanted to drop in coaching to be as widely available to Googlers as any other perk that was touted in the media. With a small team that became the drop in coaching program career guru that's still in place today, many years later, it's over a decade now, which is one of my proudest career accomplishments and a program I'm really passionate about. So we've actually already done the session on how to create an internal coaching program within your organization.

If you're interested in that, email hello at pivotmethod.com. We'll make sure you get the recording. Today is going to be focused more on the one-on-one interactions of helping somebody think through what's next. So I always start with this question because this is a coaching question.

Each time you ask somebody a question they've never heard before, it creates new neural pathways in their brain. And so when you ask, create, we have 30 minutes together. I would love to know, what would you like to walk away with by the end of our time together? This is already where the person starts coaching themselves.

And that way, in the moment, when you are in this conversation, you can both get clear, what are we aiming to do here? A little background on pivot before we get into the specific coaching aspect of it. Pivot is a mindset and it's a method. Pivot as a mindset is about being open and adaptable to change.

And I don't have to tell any of you, now is the time to adopt a pivot mindset because we are pivoting and getting pivoted every single day. So how do we navigate that uncertainty and harness our uncertainty and sometimes anxiety about the future in a productive way? One of my mottos is, if change is the only constant, let's get better at it. And as I shared in my private Momentum community earlier today, well, we've just all gotten accelerated onto the black belt track.

So now we're all getting black belt training. And if change is the only constant and it's hourly, not even daily, how can we get better at it? What are the mindfulness practices? What are the self-awareness practices?

And what are some very practical tips and tools to navigate? Because sometimes inspiration isn't enough. And that's certainly what I found when I was inspired to write Pivot. I got the book deal for Pivot in 2014.

It came out in the fall of 2016. And I was, at one point, had kept hitting plateaus every few years. And I became angry. And I felt that I had read hundreds of business, personal development, coaching, self-help books.

And none of them were getting me through these pivot points or plateaus that I kept experiencing. And at the time, I didn't even have that language, pivot point or plateau. It just felt like a crisis. So the method, the four-stage pivot method that I'm going to share with you is the actual nuts and bolts.

How do you help take somebody from confusion to clarity? How do you go from somebody feeling intimidated, overwhelmed, unsure, frozen, even discouraged or bored in their career, and move on toward ahas, insights, inspiration, and practical action? When I present this to individuals, I often say pivot is the new plan A. When startups talk about pivoting, it's often plan B.

Something has gone wrong, and now they need to pivot to stay afloat. I'm even hearing medical practitioners or medical experts around the pandemic saying, this strategy isn't working. We have to pivot our approach. So it's cool hearing pivot more and more algorithmic lexicon.

That's only one way to think about pivoting. Pivoting as a plan A means there is no problem. And especially when it comes to our careers, it's so important that we impart for our teams and for ourselves this message that a pivot is not a problem nor a personal shortcoming. I wasted so much time beating myself up when I would hit pivot points.

For example, two years in, I work at Google. I was delivering the same training day after day. I trained over 1,000 people in my first year at the company back in 2006. And when I hit a plateau at Google, I remember thinking, what is wrong with me?

I must be one of those entitled millennials the media keeps talking about. I put so much shame and blame on myself for not being happy at what should have been my dream job. And all that does is create a state of paralysis and frozen. And the other thing that happens, and I had so many of those 1,000 people that I trained.

You know, Google was always looking for the best and the brightest. And at that time, they didn't have as many programs for how you keep them. So I was often the first point of contact in the company where they would come to me and say, Psst, Jenny, I'm getting kind of bored. I don't know what to do.

And as much as we'd like to paint this rosy picture that people are going to immediately go to their manager and just be transparent and own their career and talk about what's on their mind, they're often scared. And they don't want their manager to think they have one foot out the door. So they don't talk about it. And instead, they start looking either at internal job boards or external.

They start networking, thinking, I've hit a pivot point. I've hit a plateau. Maybe it's time for me to leave. But nobody really wants that.

Even everybody I interviewed for the book pivot, nobody said that leaving their company was their first choice. It was only when they hit one plateau after the next and they didn't feel they had the internal support to pivot internally or grow within their role that they then start to look externally and look to leave. I love this quote from Heraclitus. And oh boy, is it true now more than ever?

He says, no person ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and they're not the same person. The world is changing so quickly around us, even if we don't think we're in a pivot or a pivot in the large sense of the word. Because often when I'm teaching this in organizations, I remind people, pivots can be very small. It doesn't have to be these massive moves, quitting your job, starting a business, changing your role, moving to a totally different industry.

A lot of pivots, in fact, the most successful pivots start right where you are and they are a way to expand within the role that you have. But even still, you might not even think that you're pivoting, but every day we wake up, we're a day older, we're a day creakier in our body, maybe we're more tired or more energized, and we're never stepping in the same river twice. Our teams change, the company changes, the economy changes. And so even if you think you're the same person and you think that you're fine where you are and you don't need to pivot or grow, well, you're still not stepping in the same river twice.

So every day we're being asked to adapt and respond and be agile. And certainly now that is the case. But again, even hour by hour, things are not staying the same. So how do we find solid footing when it feels like we're never stepping in the same river twice, which is really the truth of our existence?

I talk in the book about how we know the term high net worth. These are people who have earned a lot of financial resources in their lifetime. But for so many of the people that you manage and coach, and all of you here, certainly, I would consider you high net growth. So if you are taking time out of your very busy day during a very stressful time in our history, in our culture, in our society, you are high net growth.

If you're watching the recording and you're taking time out of the day to learn and grow and expand, high net growth means you are not just asking, what am I earning? But what am I learning? How am I growing? High net growth individuals will not be satisfied by money alone.

And it's a mistake that companies make thinking that it's just salary and benefits or perks that are going to get their high net growth employees to stay. So the first distinction that we can make here is that if somebody is high net growth, they are willing to make a lateral move, take on an extra project at work, grow a side hustle, bootstrap a business, because they are hungry to know that they are learning and growing and ultimately making an impact. So when their needs for growth are being met, I call them impactors for short. Impactors will say, I also want to know I'm making a difference on my team, on the company, on our customers, on our community, on my family, on the world.

So if you're high net growth and impact, and you start to feel one of those two levers starting to wane, you will likely hit a pivot point and be looking for what's next. When we think about change, the optimal range for change is in our stretch zone. That's where in any next move or next project you're going to take on, you'll stretchy, but edgy and exciting. Segnation zone, this goes for you or your team members or those who are coaching, is where their energy flattens.

So as coaches, you know that you're supposed to pay attention. What's their body language? How's their tone of their voice? Are they super excited when they talk about learning to cook or learning to podcast?

Or are they just thinking, oh, well, I guess I should start a blog. You know, what's the energy around what the person is saying? And if they're currently in their stagnation zone, they're not growing. They're not making an impact.

And that can be deeply uncomfortable for a lot of people who are high net growth and genuinely have a desire to serve. If they go too far out of their stretch zone, the panic zone is a state of paralysis. Either analysis, paralysis, comparing despair, any one next move or next project or trying to solve their whole career conundrum all at the same time puts them in a state of panic. Nothing happens.

They just feel anxious and overwhelmed. So you want to be noticing if you're a coach or manager and you're giving an assignment or a challenge or some homework and the person just is not able to take action or they seem or it even falls under the shoulds. I call it the sea of shiny shoulds. That's kind of the panic zone.

You can name it whatever you want. I've had many different reactions to this graph as I've presented over the years. Some people have asked. One person said, well, Jenny, what if you like your comfort zone?

Is it okay to stay there? Sure, absolutely. Most likely, if you're in your comfort zone, you will probably get inhibited at some point. And sometimes people need to be in their comfort zone because something is going on personally.

Maybe they're just starting a family. They're moving across the country. There are times where you need to be in a comfort zone at work. Similarly, I've had somebody say, Jenny, is the panic zone a little small?

Should that pie chart be a little bigger? Should the yellow go all the way around? And on the exact opposite side of the spectrum, one person said to me, I love the panic zone. If I'm not in the panic zone, something's wrong.

Okay, great. So you can already see from that array of responses that you want to get clear with the person that you are managing or coaching what next steps are in their stretch zone. Be looking for that juicy, edgy, exciting aliveness and help them notice. Part of my goal with Pivot is giving all of us shared language to normalize and talk about change and specifically career change and mapping what's next in a way that's judgment neutral.

There's no judgment here. You're not stagnated. You're just in a stagnation zone where this project falls under your stagnation zone. No problem.

That's so normal. And in fact, the more intelligent and growth-oriented and talented you are, the more pivot points you're going to hit. This blew my mind that when I was even working at Google, how many of us were just shaming and blaming ourselves, as I mentioned, as the media tends to do. But why couldn't anyone just admit, okay, at a company like Google that aims to hire the top 1% or 5%, the best and the brightest, people are going to get bored more often.

Why wasn't anybody admitting this and then doing something about it? So that's partly what inspired me to create the Career Guru program because I wanted to give people a neutral third party that they could talk about and have these conversations. And I genuinely believe that if we can help people see that their pivot points are often a product of their success, that it just means they've outgrown their current career incarnation and their current set of projects, that's a good thing. We should be celebrating these pivot points.

Another thing that I'll mention right now, given the state of the world and the pandemic that we're all living through, this once-in-a-lifetime, I mean, hopefully once-in-a-lifetime, but certainly the most serious global event that so many of us have had in our lifetimes, already on a day-to-day basis, people are no longer in their comfort zone. So this is something that's going to be really important as you have conversations with team members over the coming days and weeks. There is a baseline level of anxiety and uncertainty that if the volume was at a 4 or 5 before, has been cranked up to an 8, 9, or 10. People are afraid for their health.

They're afraid for their family's health. They're afraid for their job. They're afraid for their company. Now we're all learning how to be more resilient during times like this.

And there's incredible resilience, creativity, innovation, collaboration that's happening right now. But be aware and be open that people are less likely to want to take certain risks right now because they're already out of their comfort zone in such a dramatic way. And people are going to learn how to manage this pandemic and self-isolation and self-quarantine and shelter at home and all of the things that certainly we're feeling in New York and will continue across the rest of the country. We actually, most likely right now, need to help people take down from their panic zone.

So if people are feeling panicked and overwhelmed, it's about saying, how can we make the next steps smaller? What's something small that we can do or something small that we can try? I define a career pivot as a methodical shift in a new related direction based on a foundation of your strengths and what you're doing. is already working now so important for me to reiterate here this does not have to mean a role change or promotion this is about saying what is working so often when we vent your family and friends you come home after a long day of work well look we're already all at home so we're already working at home our family's probably right in the next room if anything we're too distracted but what we tend to do is focus on what went wrong what's not working what we're frustrated about what we need to vent about and it's so rare that our family responds by saying oh well what do you want what does success look like it's easy to just pile on yeah here's how my day went so the whole point of pivoting in a career sense is about saying what's working and what's something new and related that i could try even if it's within your current role and same for the people that you're coaching so a lot of times people assume that when they hit a pivot point well they must need to change their role in order to grow or must need to get promoted or start looking on internal job boards they actually there's some education needed here about you can grow right where you are but we do need to think about our careers a little differently the four stages of the pivot method and this is since the book even came out in 2016 but i've really boiled it down to these four questions what's working what does success look like what's out there what can i try that's it at the end of the day the whole goal of the pivot method as a manager mentor or coach or if you're going through this for yourself what can i try there's no solving here this is not about having the answers and i don't have to tell you right now none of us have the answers people are scrambling to navigate this crisis in this pandemic so the best we can do as organizations as leaders as managers mentors and coaches is to help our team members and help our coaches understand what is working what are your strengths what can you double down on during this time to get you through when i usually teach pivot method when we're not pivoting around a pandemic i encourage people to ask what does success look like one year from now and the joke is always ha ha ha isn't the five-year question out of date where you see yourself five years from now and now it's almost funny to say what does success look like one year from now in a way for people depending what stage of response they're at around the pandemic that's out of the question there are people who are being laid off there are businesses that are completely frozen and shut down it's impossible to ask what does success look like a year from now not for everyone for some people they might find that very motivating okay if we get through this and we're stronger than ever on the other side what does success look like but maybe right now you want to have conversations with people about what does success look like a week from now a month from now three months from now six months from now so you throttle that and by the way as a coach sometimes i'll ask the person i'm speaking with i'll say you tell me what would be most helpful do you want to look at what success would look like six months from now or do you want to do shorter time frame or longer what works best for you and that way you get a sense for where they're at as well because for example with so many companies and so many people pivoting toward working from home now you know i've been working from home for nine years but maybe this is somebody's first week working from home so you're going to coach them around it and you just want to know a month from now what does success look like talk to me about your daily routines how you wake up where are you working in the home what's what's your day like how does it feel how do you feel when you start to wind down at the end of the day and so you're helping them work through a time frame that makes sense given the scope of the pivot and how recently it's all happening or how soon now it'll be happening only when a person is grounded in what's working and what success looks like then you keep moving and the biggest mistake most hitters make and by the way most managers and coaches is to jump straight to scanning so imagine in this working from home example managers doing coaching with a team member and they say and the team member they say what would you like to talk about today oh working from home and the challenges okay we have 30 minutes together what's your ideal outcome from this conversation i'd really like some strategies for how to work from home with my kids in the other room and stay sane and focused and productive right away usually a lot of managers who are very good at problem solving and that's how they got into that role of manager will go okay so you want to stay focused and productive have you tried writing and there it is have you tried and they go right into problem solving so oh i heard the problem okay now let's brainstorm and they skip what's working and what does success look like and that is the juiciest part of the coaching conversation because only until you've spent half of your time together exploring those two things then can you give the really resonant targeted brainstorming layer in the process if you want a great book on this subject one of my friends michael bungay stannier just came out with a book called the advice trap and he says we all need to tame our inner advice monster who we let out way too early in these conversations what can i try as it relates to the pivot method and certainly as managers and coaches your job is not to solve anything in a career conversation and i think that sounds quite counterintuitive for a lot of people because managers often put pressure on themselves well i have to know i have to know what to tell my team member about whatever they're hoping to do in their career i'm the manager i need to be able to provide the answers and resources and the coaching to get them there but if you take off the solving hat you also model for your team member or your coachee they don't have to solve this either you just need to come up with some resonant pilots and next steps and then those pilots will start to gain momentum of their own so let's get into now the actual framework as it results as it relates to career conversations i'd love for you to recall just take a moment or two what is one of the most memorable career conversations that someone has ever had with you what made it great what did the coach or manager do well what powerful questions did they ask and what did it empower you to do i would love to hear from you in the chat especially what powerful questions did they ask sometimes i do this exercise and people will say i can't remember a memorable career conversation or i love coaching my team i love coaching other people i can't remember the last time someone did this with me my hope especially organizations is that we change that there's no reason that somebody shouldn't be asked powerful questions like what do you really want um how would you feel a year from now if nothing had changed what is your highest purpose and i can't wait to hear what some of your powerful questions are either that your favorite go-to's or people have asked you so why isn't this happening what gets in the way of career conversations for one thing i mentioned earlier fear sometimes people are afraid managers are afraid oh if i if i bring this up people are gonna start to want things that i can't get or oh if i just bring up the conversation they're gonna want to pivot out of the team or out of the role or individuals think my manager will think i'm not committed if i say i'm at a pivot point if i let them know how i'm really feeling they're gonna look at me differently time sometimes both say i have too much on my plate so managers are really busy managing the team employees are busy with their workload either one thinks that this is all that important in the moment metrics in some cases it's not what's measured or rewarded sometimes it's a role issue clarity managers will say oh it's not my responsibility employees need to own their career and employees will say gosh my manager never asks me what my goals are i wish they would i wish they would ask and they don't know how to bring it up sometimes both are unsure that even with the best of intentions they don't really know what is a career conversation and i will say too i think this is relatively new at least in the way that i teach it um so often career conversations at least say 10 years ago used to be really lumped in with performance reviews that at the same time the manager was sort of reviewing an employee's performance for the year they would say okay and what does the success look like for the next year and what are your goals and it's all very serious and employees are quite nervous when they're getting a performance review some organizations are changing a performance management system altogether and they're not doing this one annual conversation career conversations can be more informal and certainly more exploratory it's better that they don't happen at the same time as performance reviews it's also important to know that we all have a role so we want employees to own their career but we need to give them the resources to do that and the tools to do that even with the best of intentions and i consider myself a relatively self-aware person i've been reading self-development books since i was 20 years old and i was still so confused every time i would hit those pivot points or plateaus at google we used to have 15 different performance sorry personal development plan templates pdp templates the templates were not the problem i remember delivering pdp workshops when i was at google and this was right around the time just before we started career guru and i remember thinking the template is not the problem it's that people don't know how to get fuzzy ideas in their mind from their head and onto the page they need a process for that and that is why i created the pivot method managers can do very simple steps that launch career conversations with their team so yes we want employees to own their career we want employees to grow their self-awareness and it's so simple for managers to write to their team and say hey team i'd love to have some informal career conversations with each of you please find 30 or 45 minutes on my calendar sometime in the next month and by the way we can do these as walk-in talks or over coffee or over lunch they don't have to be in the office great that's it that's all the manager has to do i've had people managers sometimes say to me well i don't schedule these because i have to do so much work i'm busy enough as it is i prepare hours and hours for each person i review all their one-on-one notes that is a manager who's putting too much work on their own shoulders you don't need to prepare because you don't need to have the answers this is a time to listen ask questions explore and brainstorm for hr's part hr can be helpful in giving a framework so giving tools for managers and employees that empower people to have these conversations and my goal with pivot is have shared language to talk about it that's transparent on all sides so another thing i found was that a lot of coaching frameworks are and management trainings are obscured to the person sitting in front of you so whether you're learning a coaching model like cti or let's say a manager goes to manager training and then they're sitting with their teammate and they're like racking their brain like this person normally storming or forming you know or like t grow okay let me work my way through this t grow coaching model while this person's sitting there and they're so not able to be present so part of the goal with pivot is shared language to look together and say okay great okay you're at a pivot point let's look at what's working and what does success look like a year from now and it's a parallel process that they can do together or separately on their own 70 of a career conversation in my personal opinion is listening that's it 20 asking simple powerful questions and 10 recapping notice i did not put on here giving advice that can happen at the very very end and in fact sometimes coaches or employees there's a trick question they'll sit down they'll say i would just really love to know what you think about xyz i'd love to know what you think i should do and my answer to that is always i'm happy to share but you first first i would love to hear what your goals are what's most important to you and what success looks like and i'm happy to weigh in at the end okay so going through the four stages of the pivot method let's look at practical simple powerful questions that you can ask and i will share a recording so you don't need to write this all down but i will also say you don't need to be too creative as a manager or a coach the super smart creative questions is not the goal it's actually to have your questions like a good interviewer news anchor journalist podcast host is that you're almost invisible questions are so simple as to be invisible so again just as we started this workshop i always ask what's your ideal outcome so maybe just before this what would you like to discuss in this case today we're talking about a career conversation and then what's your ideal outcome so let's say um yeah i want to talk about we use the working from home example or maybe it's burnout so they say the topic is i'm feeling really burnt out and i'm overwhelmed and i don't know what to do okay with our 30 minutes together what would you what's your ideal outcome what would you love to walk away with i'd love to have some strategies for managing my anxiety and managing my workload so that i'm not so exhausted every day or every week okay so if if burnout is let's say one is totally burnt out and 10 is completely energized and recharged where would you rate yourself currently so by asking them how would you rate this area from 1 to 10 you're putting this first marker on the map this pivot point so they say i'm feeling too i'm almost completely fried okay now you know where you're starting and then the vision is what does the 10 look like if they're out of two maybe you want to ask what is the seven and then what is the 10 because sometimes people if you say what does the 10 look like they'll say i don't know i'm just so tired every day i'm fried and i'm anxious and i'm not getting my work done well they can't go that far to get to the vision by asking these two simple questions how would you rate this area 1 to 10 and what does the 10 look like now together you've set the brackets of where you are now and really you could spend an hour on what does the 10 look like so ask a lot of follow-up questions what does the 10 look like well i would wake up feeling energized what else i would have a nice flow of morning routines say more what's important to you about that well i would have an hour to myself before anyone else wakes up what's important to you about that so you can ask those two magic questions what else and what's important to you about that over and over and over and you'll get deeper and deeper to what i call the roots of the topic tree that whatever the first thing for the person says when you ask what does the 10 look like that is just five percent of their vision and the more time you send on vision more resonant and impactful and powerful the rest of the coaching will be part of the plant stage is also about saying what is working so in a burnout conversation somebody could vent for an hour about what burnout feels like and in a way sometimes i'll say as a coach or the manager i trust you know what it feels like to be out of two and actually we can stay there we can keep talking about that or we can shift toward what you do want and think back to a time when you did feel really energized what ingredients were present so we're starting to investigate what is working or what has worked in the past and what are your true strengths so in a burnout conversation is this might not be the best example but typically when we think about strengths because pivot is a very strengths-based approach it's you think of competencies things that people are good at um what they're recognized for whether it's in their upbringing or education or at work but that's very different or it can be very different from what actually energizes that person because all of you could think just because you're good something it doesn't mean that it energizes you and sometimes these activities shift so true strengths are at the intersection of things that we are good at and that energize us that intrinsic internal motivation and this comes from a company called helios that i partner with they have an assessment that i love it's called strength scope it's a little bit different than clinton strengths in that it will create a report about the top seven energizer activities so it doesn't measure what your strengths are but it measures energy what types of activities give you the most energy so for somebody collaboration is a big energizer for others it's a big drainer for some uh project management big energizer for others huge drainer so by having a conversation around energy it also removes the judgment it doesn't mean a person is bad at something just means that kind of activity does not energize them so it's really important in the coaching to explore what are your strengths within a given day within energy management within working from home what is working and what are your strengths what can you lean on to help you shift toward that vision of what a 10 looks like the second stage of the method is scan scanning is for three things based on the plant stage together you're going to start scanning for people skills and projects and i call that bridging the gap think about plugging in a destination in google maps you are here you want to get here now scanning only once you have those two points can we say okay what are all the different modes of transportation how long will they take what are the roadblocks or the potential barriers again i like to spend half of the coaching conversation on vision alone and the play-up stage then i'll say to the person in front of me okay right off work in the road we could spend more time building out your vision and what's working or we could shift toward brainstorming and start coming up with pilots and experiments what would be most helpful i always love giving my coachee the fork in the road choice because it empowers them if you're a manager and you're having a career conversation there's no rush and sometimes managers or coaches think oh we're not getting done fast enough our hours almost up oh we're having we're only one stage in how are we gonna finish this or the manager will think oh we better shift into the next part now but that's you owning this again if you ask you might spend the rest of the time on vision and then later in a follow-up session or one-on-one you can add the brainstorming piece so there's no rule that says it all has to happen at the same time just spending an hour or half an hour on vision alone strengths and what does success look like is such a gift that is the part we are all good at brainstorming your teams your coaching clients are so resourceful people are usually not short on ideas they're short on the resonant vision that is gonna get them out of bed every day so that's the part we want to focus on that's where the gold is and then it's much easier to brainstorm next steps and small experiments once they have a real connection to their strengths what's working and what success looks like so if they say i'll take this work in the road for brainstorming now we go for quantity not quality so again we're scanning for people skills and projects and i'm kind of combining scan and pilot because pilot is all about small experiments instead of trying to solve the whole career question up front even trying to solve a topic as big as burnout or working from home it's what are some small pilots small experiments that you do um we'll get there in a second as you start to brainstorm i want to share one more framework that i find quite helpful and this is Mihaly Csat-Mihaly's flow state basically these are the two dimensions the two axes of a flow state that state of almost ecstatic bliss when you're so engaged and almost enraptured by that thing that you're doing that time passes you don't even realize time passing it's he does describe a flow state as almost ecstatic bliss and executives report being five times more productive when they're working in the state of flow than when they're not so how do we help our team members our coaches find a flow state a flow state is that sweet spot with where we have just enough skill and just enough challenge if somebody on your team or your coaching has too much skill and not enough challenge they are going to be bored and that's where you get to that stagnation zone on the other hand if they have too much challenge and not enough skill to meet that challenge or that project they will tip into anxiety and worry what's happening right now is that because of the situation with the pandemic the dial on challenge has gone all the way up so for so many people they're automatically no matter how work has shifted or not they're automatically in a state of arousal anxiety and worry because who of us has the skills to navigate a global pandemic i've never done it who of us has the skills to shelter at home and work from home and be able to go to any cultural events outside of the house and be worried about the especially elderly members of your family most of us have never done this before so our level of skill is going to grow but it's the challenge is way up right now in regular sort of day-to-day work this can be two very helpful levers of conversation so if somebody's bored we need to help them up their challenge what is the next step or next project that would bring a stretch zone challenge and if they're feeling anxiety or burnt out or worried well how do they need to grow their skills so that's a big part of the scan state is also scanning for not just people skills and projects but within skills how do you need to grow anytime we're pivoting even within your current role or we're coaching someone to pivot there's a skill gap and that's what's exciting for high net growth individuals so right now for all of us we are being called to grow as leaders as change navigators so we are all learning skills to manage anxiety mindfulness um cooperation so it can be helpful to have a more direct conversation about these two things rather than have boredom or anxiety be these taboo subjects that we don't talk about or we don't know how to talk about in the pivot method framework launch is that you reduce risk by piloting and you can go all in on a new direction but i also think about a little launch and certainly in a coaching conversation a little launch is about narrowing down to next steps so as you reach the end of your time to say what are some of your biggest ahas from today's conversation just as what is your ideal outcome a coaching question all on its own so is this when you ask the coaching the coachee or your team member what is what are some of your biggest ahas they do the work of synthesis if they didn't know they had an aha sometimes it's obvious you see the light bulb light up and you see their whole body language brightening and you see it you see i call them like idea balloons or you just see them sort of completely animate but if barring that complete and total revolution revolution and i teach a separate workshop on accelerating aha moments barring that when you ask what are some of your biggest takeaways they do the synthesis they think what am i taking away from this and that creates another coaching moment i also like to ask them first what next small steps resonate most of everything we talked about together you tell me what small next steps resonate most notice again we're not solving anything i know i sound like a broken record but i see this all the time over and over and over managers and coaches have this bad habit of trying to solve things that creates a lot of stress and pressure that doesn't need to be there so instead you're asking them what small next steps resonate the most again you are modeling that the person in front of you is the expert on their life and their work because if you just assign okay great so based on everything we talked about i would suggest that the action items here are x y and z you are simply modeling and same thing with giving advice you are modeling you're the expert you're the manager you're the coach and they are not empowered they clearly don't know the answers and all that does is create dependency where they think well i better come back to you next time i'm confused instead of teaching them you have the answers within you tune in what does your gut say that's one of my all-time favorite coaching questions what does your gut say get really quiet and listen for that answer and then what next small steps resonate only then once they've shared their small steps you may also as their manager or coach have some challenges for them you may have seen a little idea balloon or a little something that they said where their voice lit up or their eyes lit up and you want to say and i'm going to challenge you will you reach out to so-and-so and schedule a 20-minute virtual coffee chat in the next week and then they might go oh i'm nervous i don't know and good that means you've gotten something in their stretch zone similarly if any of the homework sounds like a should call it out ditch it revise it so if the person is saying well i guess i should sign up for that class i just call it out i'll say that doesn't sound like it's resonating with you um what would what would really let you up or what would really challenge you here in an exciting way so keep looking until you find that resonant next step and of course a lot of this boils down to accountability of what will you do by when and how will i know and i say of course because if you've been through any manager training or any coach training often there's this emphasis on nail it down you know hold people accountable that people really want to be held accountable so i like to ask this what we do by when maybe it's already going to be clear sometimes i'll even say let's set up a calendar invite for a week from now and i'll have an email reminder attached to it and just hit reply to the email and send me an update but however it is it can be helpful if they have that exciting challenge to report back and let you know how it went if this is if you're a direct line manager and this is someone on your team you can say add this to our next one-on-one agenda i'd love to hear how it goes or i'd love to continue the conversation so we haven't solved anything we haven't fixed by the way sometimes their manager you can't solve it the ways that they want to stretch and grow and be challenged you might not have a project for them right away but you're going to know so much more clearly who on your team will be most interested in which projects down the road so even if it's a month from now three months from now you will have a much better sense of how people are excited to grow and what their strengths are so that you can start to be that really effective traffic director of incoming work and get it to the right people who will resonate most some of the biggest pitfalls and then we'll wrap up and open it up for q a some of the biggest pitfalls giving advice we've talked about jumping the scan too early you've got to resist the itch to problem solve and to go straight to brainstorming getting caught up in the story sometimes people are just so focused on what's not working and ultimately that's not going to be as enlightening uplifting or helpful of a conversation so sometimes i'll ask would be helpful to just vent about this and we set a timer do you want to spend for five minutes or i'll say i get the sense that you um you know what isn't working would be more helpful would be helpful to stay there or to focus on what you do want sometimes people also think you need to know the whole backstory but you don't and on the flip side i see sometimes a lot of managers start the third degree like well tell me well when did you try this and they go into detective mode they're asking so many specific questions they're not coaching questions in a way they're selfish because it's about the managers need to know not in service of the employee or coachee exploring their biggest values vision and dreams so getting caught in the backstory and the details is a problem-solving mode and it's ultimately not that productive sometimes i'll deliver this training and the answer is i'll watch them squirming and saying they'll ask a question like well don't you think it would be a good idea to sign up for xyz class okay that's a leading question that's not a coaching question it might technically have a question mark at the end but what about trying this is not a coaching question that's your agenda as a manager of the coach and you're imposing it on this person if you have something so brilliant that you must blurt it out do that but don't try to subtly leave your coachee or team member toward the answer that you think is best for them by these subtle coaching tactics it feels so uncomfortable when you're on the receiving end of that and by the way whenever i blurt something there's i like to give a caveat call me crazy but so i'll say call me crazy but i get the sense that you don't want to be doing this project at all and if that's the intuition that i get in the moment i'll just blurt it out martha beck uses the language tell me where i'm wrong i get the sense you don't be doing this tell me where i'm wrong so you're giving the person permission yes you have a thought you have an insight or an intuitive hit or an idea you say call me crazy or this could be totally off off track but what about xyz just give them permission because especially the power dynamics with a manager and a team member is that they will inherently often defer to you if you say it must be what you want them to do or it must be right in quotes so i really like to caveat when you are going to give an input or advice or chime in just give them permission to disagree thinking too hard i gave you some very simple questions what's working what does success look like what's out there what can you try and the two magic ones what else and what's important to you about that that's it you don't have to invent another single question unless you have one that naturally pops to mind don't work too hard trying to ask smart questions and one smart good coaching question after the next you're not going to be present think about and now everyone listens to podcasts you know i used to mention let's say watching oprah or something but the best podcast hosts are very in the moment with our guests and then the podcast that just feel flat the host is so focused on the next question they're going to ask they're not even present to what was just said and it's usually pretty obvious they just have a list in their mind of following the list they don't give it too they just don't care what the guest has said and sometimes the guests will say very profound or powerful things but the host is already on the next question and that's usually the more inexperienced so same for managers and coaches be present don't have your next question in mind just be present stay really simple really present and um if you feel yourself thinking too hard or for me when i first started coaching at google back in 2009 i used to get sick to my stomach before one-on-one calls and some of my coaching i did is walk-in talks around the baylands and mountain view and i had a mentor say to me if you're getting that nervous because i thought what does this mean is this not my calling because i feel like i want to throw up every time i have a coaching call and he said i was owning the sessions like i was putting too much pressure on myself to be able to deliver the most amazing coaching this person has ever received and so when i could let go of that and trust the process and stop thinking so hard and stop owning it stop trying to be this brilliant coach just to be a vehicle to be a facilitator it's such a privilege to be a facilitator of someone else's thinking it's such a beautiful powerful and intimate role that you get to play in a person's life so drop the need to be right drop the need to solve be present and trust that in half an hour in an hour magical things will happen you just don't know what they are and by the way they said this to us at coach training and i'll say it to you if all you do is listen you don't say a word for half an hour that's probably the most time that person will even have had that week where they got to just talk and focus on themselves for half an hour or an hour so just know that you can't go wrong the more listening you do the more of a gift it really is giving up on a question too soon filling silence so i told you one of my favorite questions what does your gut say or what do you want sometimes especially earlier in career employees they're so focused on getting an a the proverbial a from their parents from their manager from society that they don't even know what they want so let's say a question what do you really want and the person might get this shocked look or get uncomfortable and a lot of newer coaches will stumble right into that silence and say oh okay sorry sorry i know that's a tough question i know okay yeah it's a little personal let's move on and they just like this very awkwardness about the silence means that they give up too soon so when i ask a question like what does your gut say by the way sometimes people will go i don't know i mean blah blah blah and you just hear them right back at the beehive of the brain no no no stop i'm just gonna ask you to pause you're back in your head again what does your gut say or what does your heart want can i let it be silent and inevitably that is where the ahas start to happen just past the silence just past when you think it's so awkward you better step in and say something so i encourage you as managers and coaches to play with this balance play with asking somebody a question a powerful question and letting there be just a little more silence than you are comfortable with and see what happens a quick note on notes it's so tempting as a manager as a coach to be taking furious notes while the person is speaking to you unless note-taking is your superpower which i do consider it mine i can type verbatim while listening and coaching and it's something i've done since i was a little kid i was paid to take lecture notes in college i just note-taking is something i do and i do well and it's a part of my offering to clients but for most people note-taking is a missed opportunity and here's why if you're in person taking notes models that you have the answers you're the expert it's almost like a relationship of a therapist it's like oh you're the trained person and you're taking notes too it's also kind of that self-serving thing well i need to take notes because i want to remember what's being said so that i can be a brilliant coach or manager it's not necessary note-taking will take you out of the moment by nature if you or your coachee are taking notes you are transcribing you are not creatively expansively thinking you just can't do them both at once so you're transcribing or you're in a super expansive creative state so i also ask the person sitting across from me i'll say i'm asking not to take notes while we're talking and let's just both be really present in a moment and then at the end we'll save five minutes so you can capture everything and just trust you'll remember what's most important also if you're taking notes you're breaking eye contact over and over again if you're in person so you want somebody staring at the top of your head while you're furiously taking notes you want to be present again in the moment eye contact and just present even as a coach i've had this happen where someone was coaching me and where i was coaching them i know every single time they're taking notes there's extra silence they kind of forget the last thing i was saying in fact i take notes for my clients so they don't have to and i know every single time i'll say are you taking notes over there i'll go yeah yeah you caught me i'll say i just want you to relax get up go look out a window go get outside set your mind free it is so rare that we let our mind roam without that left brain mode of trying to capture it all and the content that comes out when you allow the person to do that and to be fully relaxed it's just so much more powerful so as uncomfortable as this might be i highly encourage you to practice get into your stress zone and drop the need for note-taking trust you'll both remember what's most important at the end of the session and drop the need for notes because you don't need them you'll if you stay present you'll know exactly what to ask the moment you need to ask it and if you get stuck by the way if you're coaching and you get stuck you can just say all right what would be most helpful for here or i'm not quite sure what to ask you next what would be most helpful or well let's circle back to what you wanted to walk away with by the end of this session how are we doing so far where should we go from here we have about 10 minutes left you don't have to own it all collaborate that's what this is about especially now when none of us as leaders none of us have the answers so this is an ongoing collaboration what do you need i love what joy wrote in the chat what do you need for me how can i be helpful right now and i've been encouraging my community to ask how can i serve i see that bonnie wrote validating and sharing where i shine and obstacles i've overcome that is such a gift as a manager or coach if you can acknowledge the person for what you see in them and that really goes to what's working it's like where do you see them shine and light up and excel and where in your mind what are their biggest gifts and superpowers and how have you seen them grow that reflection is so so powerful so as we start to wrap up and and then open it up for questions i would love to hear from you you can see it says circled up five items that's if you took notes on paper but really i would just love to ask what's one aha or insight that stands out from this conversation today i'm including these three things here because this is what i like to ask as coaching questions at the end of any workshop i deliver or even in one-on-ones what one small step can you take in the next week and what one next step would make the biggest impact so you can see how the whole pivot method the whole framework boils down to one or two next steps and and my team we're even doing just what's one experiment you can set up this month that's it with one experiment so i'd love to hear from you in the chat and then feel free to come off of mute or add a question in the chat i would love to open it up now you can also share your insight or an aha either in chat or you can come off of mute to share but i'd love to know because especially in a group setting by sharing your insights or ahas it also helps other people crystallize what they've learned as well and get ideas from whatever next steps or actions you're going to try so joy says i love the experiment question kathy i appreciate all the simple powerful question examples wonderful bonnie said i love the inside around notes i think this strategy will be most helpful for my coachee to be more present amazing a couple additional resources you can go to pivot method.com slash companies if you're interested in bringing even virtual pivot programs to your organization and then there are more specific resources for managers at pivot method.com slash lead and again we'll also send this recording kathy said i like the strength energizer assessment you mentioned yes that's called strength scope and uh it's a great it's a great tool hi everybody this is joy one thing that's just coming up for me as we are wrapping up i like this idea of you know just identifying specifics because i think sometimes i know for myself when i get gridlocked i need to like commit to an action to get me unstuck and make sure that the barrier to entry is low enough that i'm just going to do it and i think um as we are all in the midst of the pivot process and wading through all of this um and i think it's so easy right now just to get bogged down by emotion and just so paralyzed um but i think this now more than ever we need community we need we need to creatively use relationships and i think i i've always really believed that relation business is about relationships and businesses that thrive leaders that thrive like get that um at least the ones i like to work closely with um so i think especially in this time of so much change i'm i like this idea of in this next week asking the question who who can i reach out to who can i send a handwritten letter to i did that this last week and it was so so powerful just it was a podcast host and i just really appreciated the content and it wasn't like asking for anything um but then that created a memorable experience and exchange that was actually a powerful catalyst for some things so i think if we can look at who can i connect with and it doesn't have to be with an agenda but i think there's real power in that and then we just that's how we get more support and we can't have too much of that right now so i think that's kind of what's on my heart as we're wrapping up thank you so much joy i love that i love that you sent a handwritten note and it is those small things as you said that can be such a catalyst and that moment of joy as well just creating that for another person i saw when he also wrote when he said i like your insight around notes i sometimes take notes for my coaches too but i will never do it again i would say when you just try it just see how you are as a coach when you're not taking notes and then see how your coaches are when you ask them not to take notes and if it makes you both feel better you can record the session just so that you have that as a backup i use uber conference you can also see how it goes so pilot as the whole method would say just pilot with that and and then you can always jot down notes after that conversation so you're no longer trying to be present in the moment but afterward it's quite powerful to say now what's my overall impression so i have one friend who's a coach she does send quite a detailed summary to her clients afterward and i don't know i actually haven't asked her how detailed how thorough she is during the call but i've had coaches reflect very powerful things to me after the fact but i can tell they were super present with me in the session itself and afterward they'd say i really saw you stretching and here's what i acknowledge in you and here's what you said you're going to work on and here's what this is in service of and these are the values that you're honoring and that is so powerful i have saved some of those communications from coaches over the years and i cherish them so much because it is such a gift to see and be seen and that's what we really have an opportunity to do as coaches and managers bonnie said i love the what does your heart want i think it goes deeper than what do you want and in a workplace may have been difficult to build the trust yeah but truly as the beginning of building authentic relationship there's an exercise i mentioned in pivot head heart cut so if you're a little hesitant to go straight for the what does your heart want question you could say let's do an exercise it's called head heart cut what does your head say what does your heart want what does your gut say and the head is often the shoulds the heart is really that heart that soul center what do they want and the gut is often the referee between the two or the gut knows the truth truth with a capital t kathy says i love your perspective that you don't have to solve anything that's a very powerful insight i'm so glad kathy yeah see how it works just see how your energy changes when you enter these conversations as a facilitator and not a solver are there any other questions before we wrap up well then you all have the gift of 20 extra minutes because we've locked off extra time just so that we had time for q a but i have to say i'm going to do a podcast soon i've been podcasting daily around the pandemic and i see my uh dr michael canselis is here he's been my co-host for several of those that's at pivot method.com podcast and i'm going to do an upcoming episode on screen fatigue so i hope that you enjoy this extra 20 minutes do something for you maybe go away from the screen and just pause or journal on some of these questions because this session was aimed at you as a manager you as a coach but i find them very helpful to just even look with so much changing date one day to the next to just go through those four questions what's working what does success look like even for this day for this week what's out there people scales projects and what can you try thank you so much everybody thanks so much for listening to this episode of the pivot podcast make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for pivot list a curated twice monthly newsletter where i share the inside scoop on what i'm reading watching listening to and the latest tools i'm geeking out on sign up at pivot method.com slash pivot list get shown us from this episode at pivot method.com slash podcast and connect with me on twitter at jenny underscore flick remember build first then your courage will follow hasn't it always